Social trust has been an important mechanism in overcoming crises throughout history. Several societies are now emphasizing its role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to investigate how variations in social trust across 68 countries are related to the transmission speed of COVID-19. Specifically, using cross-national index data from the World Value Survey, the study tests how variations in social trust across countries generate different time durations at which each country reaches the peak in terms of increases in new infections of COVID-19. Using data drawn between December 31, 2019 and July 31, 2020, this study found that in countries with a high level of social trust, particularly trust among ingroup members, or with a narrower or wider range than the intermediate range of trustees, the number of new infections tended to reach the first peak within a shorter time duration than in other countries. These results imply that in such societies, on the one hand, high cooperation among people to achieve common goals and strong compliance to social norms may allow them to begin neutralizing COVID-19 faster. On the other hand, however, the low risk perception and prevalence of cohesive relationships among people may lead to speedier transmission of COVID-19 before neutralization takes place.

Interest has been growing in alliance networks, and research has demonstrated several advantages of embedded networks, including joint problem solving. How embedded networks function as social capital and promote alliance formation has also been explored. However, less is known about constraints that they impose on firms' extensive search for partners. In this study, we advance our understanding of the downsides of embedded networks by proposing that embedded networks facilitate alliance formations, but they may also cause suboptimal resource matching in alliance formations. Specifically, we predict that, in alliances where initial resource matching is more important than ex post collaborative activities, suboptimal resource matching is more likely when firms ally with partners with which they have pre-existing direct or indirect ties and that such alliances decrease firm-level resource utilization performance in operations. Using codeshare alliance data from the global airline industry, we find support for our predictions.

We depart from previous research on brokerage advantages in interorganizational networks by shifting focus to the dynamics of brokerage positions. We investigate causes of the disappearance of these positions and its influence on organizational performance. Using a subnetwork consisting of a broker and its two partners as the unit of analysis, we postulate that the brokerage position disappears either when the two partners develop ties or when the ties between the broker and the partners dissolve. We predict that the patterns of interactions in which this subnetwork is embedded exert multilevel influences on the disappearance, and that embedded structures promoting persistence constrain brokerage advantages. Our analysis of codeshare alliance data in the global airline industry supports the theory and demonstrates that the persistence of brokerage positions decreases broker performance. The findings explain why brokerage positions rarely persist and why the persistence of brokerage positions does not benefit brokers.

No abstract

Alliances are formed according to firms’ expectations about postalliance value generated by partners, which are based on certain conditions during the processes of selecting a partner and forming an alliance (i.e., the prealliance conditions). This study predicts that alliance terminations are likely to occur when such expectations are not satisfied, which is likely when partners’ postalliance characteristics are inferior to their prealliance levels, or when firms have heightened expectations of alliance partners because they have forgone superior potential partners before alliance formation. Results of an analysis using data of codeshare alliances in the global airline industry show that alliance termination results from reduced market complementarity or a reduced number of common partners relative to prealliance levels, and from the presence of not-chosen prealliance potential partners characterized by high market complementarity or large numbers of common partners. The results also show a general propensity for these effects to diminish as alliance duration increases.